She pokes an imaginary dimple into her right cheek, pinches her Adam’s apple, distributes invisible money to invisible people and then heaves a sigh of relief. What this expressive woman has quietly conveyed on screen is that Congress president Rahul Gandhi has promised to provide 20% of the poorest families Rs 72,000 each year if his party wins the general election.
Welcome to ISH NEWS, an online news channel that uses Indian Sign Language (ISL) along with voice-over and subtitles, to reach out to a potential audience of 1.8 crore deaf people in the country. Launched in November, ISH News — the ISH stands for Indian Signing Hands — has so far won 14 lakh viewers through You-Tube, Facebook and Twitter, besides its own website.
ISH NEWS is a not-for-profit fully funded by AAPL Solutions, a firm that exports pharma packaging materials. It was born when Alok Kejriwal, a deaf businessman and graduate of Gallaudet University in Washington DC who helms AAPL, found TV news tough goling. “All news channels are in spoken languages, which the deaf people are unable to follow. There are no subtitles for such news either,” says Kejriwal.
He enlisted the help of a deaf friend, Aqil Chinoy, and Mansi Shah, a hearing child of deaf parents, and founded ISH News.
Before the launch, the team called deaf professionals for an interview and gave them a news item to translate into sign language. “Some of them expressed that they had never been interviewed via sign language directly from the deaf employer in their lifetime,” says Kejriwal in an email conversation.
News anchors are called news signers in their office in Lower Parel and the 10-member news-manufacturing team is made up of seven deaf professionals, two CODAs (child of deaf adults) and one hearing person.
The broadcasts are actionpacked. A line like “the rioters started throwing stones” sees the news signer pretending he is the rioter and throwing stones and looking angry. “Besides fingers, hands and arms, the anchor has to make use of their facial expressions as well. A wrong facial expression conveys the wrong meaning ... ,” says Kejriwal, adding that Mansi Shah ensures that nothing is lost in translation.
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